


Transcript

by wearemany



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Interviews, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-25
Updated: 2009-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Transcript

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [The birthday special](http://archiveofourown.org/works/167392) and references, if obliquely, [Scenes from a marriage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/173956).

JOURNALIST: ...just turn this on. Okay. Thanks, by the way, for letting us do this at your place.

BRENDON: No, yeah, of course. Totally.

JOURNALIST: I think the last time we really talked was right before you all went to India, in New York --

BRENDON: Yeah, yeah, at the Nokia thing, right. Yeah, how've you been?

JOURNALIST: Good, yeah, thanks. You?

BRENDON: Good, good.

JOURNALIST: Good. So -- your album marketing materials say it's "revealing." In fact they say it -- I counted -- five times in three pages. Are you trying to tell us something, Brendon?

BRENDON: Maybe.

JOURNALIST: If you were going to pick one word instead of "revealing," what would it be?

BRENDON: [ _Long pause_.] Honest?

JOURNALIST: Why? No, it's okay, now you get more than one word.

BRENDON: It's. Hmm. I don't think it's trying to be something it's not, I guess?

JOURNALIST: Were you pretending before?

BRENDON: No, but I was mostly -- most of what I've worked on for a while has either been for Panic, and either Ryan or Jon wrote the lyrics or we all kind of pitched in at the same time. Or it's been other people's stuff, and I've been producing or doing just the music or singing a duet or something. Those things aren't _not_ me, but they're really not about me, either. This one's about me, and I guess I felt like there wasn't anything to do but be honest.

JOURNALIST: You made a solo record, back in 2013. That wasn't honest?

BRENDON: It -- to be -- [ _Laughs_.] Wow, I can't believe how much I want to say "to be honest." That was, it was hon-- it was a lot more about the music, really, about letting myself go after any kind of noise or song or rhythm that struck me instead of having to find a four-way tie we all agreed on. The lyrics were -- I'm not saying -- look. I hate it when people talk about their old shit and they're like, "That sucked," because then you're a douchebag for having liked them before, you know? I don't want to be an asshole like that. I like the music on that album, and I think it's pretty funny, you know, it's decently clever in parts. Right now I like this one a lot better.

JOURNALIST: It's a good album, it's --

BRENDON: Oh!

MALE VOICE: Oh -- I, shit, sorry, I didn't think --

BRENDON: No, I totally forgot, I moved my thing up, and the restaurant was so fucking loud, and --

MALE VOICE: I'll go, it's cool --

BRENDON: This is -- remember, from -- he was in New York at the Nokia --

MALE VOICE: Yeah, hey man, how are you?

BRENDON: This is Spencer. In case, you know, you forgot your Panic at the Disco trading cards.

JOURNALIST: Hey, Spencer.

SPENCER: Hey.

JOURNALIST: We were just discussing Brendon's album, which the label says is revealing and he says is honest. What would you say?

SPENCER: Aren't those two words synonyms?

[ _Buzzing noise_.]

SPENCER: Oh, that's not --

BRENDON: Come sit down with me, Spence.

SPENCER: See, now he knows I have to stay.

BRENDON: Take one or take 20, dude, you know the deal.

SPENCER: Take one or take 20. Damn you, Brendon.

JOURNALIST: What's --

SPENCER: It's, I don't know, this saying? A rule?

BRENDON: A strategy, maybe?

SPENCER: You can't say just one thing to a journalist unless that's the only thing you want them to say about you.

BRENDON: So if you can't nail it one take --

JOURNALIST: You have to take 20.

SPENCER: Which means you've got 19 more questions at your disposal.

BRENDON: Use them wisely.

JOURNALIST: Okay... What _are_ you doing here?

BRENDON: He lives here.

SPENCER: Not -- I'm also, our -- Ryan, our bandmate. He and his wife just had a baby, back in Vegas. And I'm the, well, godfather, I guess --

BRENDON: Minus the actual Christianity.

SPENCER: So I've tried to be around as much as possible.

BRENDON: You could always call Ryan, too, see if he can still get it in one.

SPENCER: Or Jon! Jon was always the best at that.

BRENDON: Wasn't that Jon's rule? I think he was the chief architect of the 20 takes law.

SPENCER: I think, yeah, that sounds about right.

JOURNALIST: Spencer, what do you actually think of Brendon's album?

BRENDON: Yeah, Spence. Tell the nice man what you think. He's been refusing to answer this, actually, so I'm really glad we all wound up here together.

SPENCER: [ _Long pause_.] You know, I'm pretty proud of what we've done, what Panic's done, and I like to think there's, you know, there's some depth there, that it means something more maybe, if you listen closely. Just overall, that we're able to make something that sounds and feels meaningful, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

[ _Buzzing noise_.]

SPENCER: Shut up, I'm getting to you. Like I was saying, I'm really proud of Panic's albums, definitely. But Brendon's -- I listen to this and I think about how all this time I've known Brendon and it's just -- it's just a fucking brilliant album, really.

BRENDON: [ _Pause_.] Wow. I -- yeah, just wow, I got nothing else here. Four stars from Spencer Smith.

JOURNALIST: Brendon, can you take me through one of the songs, from the original inspiration to the writing process to recording it? Maybe the title track, or whichever you did first.

BRENDON: One and the same, actually.

JOURNALIST: Okay. So, that's "Your Mouth is Undone."

BRENDON: So it's -- it's a line from an Elvis Costello song.

JOURNALIST: Right.

BRENDON: It goes both ways, actually, in his last verse it's actually [ _singing_ ] "your mouth is made up but your mind is undone."

JOURNALIST: You're a big fan of his stuff with the Attractions?

BRENDON: Yeah, yeah, of course. Actually it was Patrick who first -- I'd heard some of his stuff, but he did a couple things with Fall Out Boy a while ago and Patrick was so excited. I got him to make me, like, a mix of the best ever Elvis Costello songs.

SPENCER: Didn't that have like 80 songs on it? I remember that.

BRENDON: Totally. It was a fucking _epic_ playlist. It was amazing.

JOURNALIST: So how did you get from there to --

BRENDON: Are you, is it -- [ _unintelligible_ ]

SPENCER: No, it's, it's fine. We -- [ _unintelligible_ ]

JOURNALIST: Is there --

SPENCER: No, you should. If you want to, you should.

BRENDON: Okay. [ _Laughs_.] Sorry, sorry, minor detour.

SPENCER: All systems go. [ _Laughs_.]

BRENDON: I'm just gonna, can I start over?

JOURNALIST: Okay.

BRENDON: I wrote "Your Mouth is Undone" in about an hour actually. I write songs pretty fast -- I think we all do, for Panic stuff anyway.

SPENCER: If it takes more than a day it's probably not going to work.

BRENDON: Right, right. So I was, it was -- last fall, Spencer came out to stay with me for a while. He'd -- uh, like, he'd had this, like, car accident, and --

SPENCER: Oh my God, don't make it sound like that. It wasn't -- I just, I had just turned 30, and I needed to get out of my head for a while. So I came here, and --

BRENDON: But that's how I got Elvis Costello stuck in my head, you know, "Accidents Will Happen." [ _Pause_.] Are you going to let me tell this story or do you want to?

SPENCER: Fine, you tell it.

BRENDON: Thank you. So Spencer is here, and he's all, like, at loose ends and shit.

SPENCER: I -- fine. Sorry.

BRENDON: And one night he's out on a date and I'm sitting there -- right here, actually, right on this couch. I'm totally feeling sorry for myself, listening to that song on repeat. And you know that's, like, it's never a good idea to put shit on and play it over and over, because all you do is wallow in how shitty you feel, and how alone you are, and how you're going to be alone _forever_ and everyone you're in love with is going to be off living their happy lives and you'll just be making the same mistakes you've been making all along --

SPENCER: Brendon --

BRENDON: So I got that line stuck in my head, "your mind is made up but your mouth is undone," and it was just, like just that line felt like it was on repeat, that and some other stuff Spencer had said to me, and finally I turned off the stereo and just started to write. I wanted to write something, I don't know. At first it was just about Spencer, and then it was -- I wanted to write something _for_ him, about how I know I'm really shitty at taking things seriously sometimes but it's not because I don't want to, it's just that I don't -- I'm, like, a recovering class clown. So I'm just the absolute worst fucking person to be in a relationship with, because I do things like decide you should go on dates with other people.

JOURNALIST: That's -- that's why you were out on a date?

SPENCER: Yeah. And it's -- the funny part is how -- or maybe it's not funny, but like, the other half of the story is how it was a pretty awful date, because all I did was talk about Brendon.

BRENDON: But you didn't --

SPENCER: I didn't come home right away, because I just, I had bought this car, and I wanted to clear my head a little, I guess, and so I got on the PCH and -- I drove clear through almost to Mexico and back, and when I got back, Brendon was passed out on the couch.

BRENDON: Because I thought you'd, like, eloped or something.

SPENCER: Yeah. You were pretty wrong, though.

BRENDON: Yeah. Um, so that's how the song got written, and I wasn't sure, really, what to do with it, but I wrote another one the next week --

JOURNALIST: Which one?

BRENDON: Uh, I think it was "Coy," yeah. So then I had two songs, and it was like, I knew I had more to write, like every time I looked at Spencer I had things to write about. And Patrick was in town and came over for dinner and when Spencer told him I was writing again, it was, he wanted to hear them, and then -- I mean. If Patrick Stump wants to produce an album for you, it's not like you're going to say no. We did those two tracks first, in a couple days. They were supposed to be demos but we ended up using most of that material for the final cut. And then Spence and I went down to this house on the coast at Puerto Vallarta and I wrote the rest of the album pretty fast. It was less than a month, right?

SPENCER: Yeah, three weeks or so.

BRENDON: And then we came back and went right into the studio --

SPENCER: And I didn't see you for like 14 days straight.

BRENDON: Yeah, it was like, it was kind of like how we did our first album, just pushing through everything, no sleep till Brooklyn, that kind of pace. Patrick and I played pretty much all the instruments ourselves --

SPENCER: Pretty much? [ _Laughs_.]

BRENDON: He's still bitter he didn't get to play drums.

SPENCER: No, no I am not. Patrick is an awesome drummer. I am bitter I didn't get to hear any of it until it was done.

BRENDON: It was -- I wanted it to be a surprise.

SPENCER: It was. And I'm not -- I'm not really bitter at all, I didn't mean that. I'm really proud.

JOURNALIST: [ _Pause_.] And this -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been covering you guys for a while now and this is -- this is the first time, right, that you, Brendon -- or either of you, actually -- has been quite so, well, out about, well, discussing your sexuality.

BRENDON: Coming out interviews are so 2004, don't you think? [Pause.] But, yeah, that's right. That's probably right.

JOURNALIST: Spencer, you were married, weren't you?

SPENCER: Yes, and that -- I don't really want to get into that but I do want to say -- this, that's not why I'm not married any more. She's, she's a really amazing person and we were in love for a long time. I wasn't, like, secretly gay all these years and -- it wasn't like that.

JOURNALIST: Okay...

SPENCER: I just -- look, we, when we were first getting together -- the band, I mean -- not, not me and Brendon. When we were first making the band, and talking about what kind of show we wanted, what we liked about other bands on stage, and it was, it was always really important to us that it be very -- very open-minded, I guess you could say. We kind of challenged our fans to think a little more, I guess, about what assumptions they made or what they were comfortable with. And in keeping with that, yeah, I think we all wanted to be open-minded in our own lives, about how we thought of ourselves or who we thought we might want to be with at one point or another.

BRENDON: It's funny, really, because all that time that our fans -- I think a lot of our fans just assumed we were _all_ gay.

SPENCER: And we were all sleeping with each other.

BRENDON: Yeah, and --

SPENCER: None of us really was. Or, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like some choice or something, but none of us was really --

BRENDON: No.

SPENCER: Not really, not like, beyond just basic curiosity, I guess.

BRENDON: Oh, like that makes it sound any better.

SPENCER: [ _Laughs_.] Yeah, good point. And, uh, I think that definitely qualifies as more than 20, so --

JOURNALIST: I have a couple more --

SPENCER: Yeah, why don't I -- I'm just gonna go, get out of your way so you can finish up. You want to call me when you're done?

BRENDON: Yeah, okay. And then we'll go over to --

SPENCER: Yeah, I'll just come back and pick you up whenever.

BRENDON: Okay.

SPENCER: Okay, bye. Nice to see you again.

JOURNALIST: You too.

[ _Pause_.]

BRENDON: So, uh. [ _Laughs_.]

JOURNALIST: I, uh, thanks for -- this obviously isn't what I thought we'd be talking about today.

BRENDON: You didn't bring your list of gay questions?

JOURNALIST: No, really, thanks for being willing to talk about it.

BRENDON: We talked about it. Talked about talking about it, I mean. Me and Spencer and me and the label. We didn't, like, send out announcements or anything. But, uh, I guess that's probably why they said "revealing" so much. [ _Laughs_.]

JOURNALIST: Yeah, that explains it. [ _Pause_.] I can't -- I'm not sure exactly how to ask this, but --

BRENDON: But you're not actually all that surprised, are you.

JOURNALIST: I never got the sense you were trying that hard to keep it a secret.

BRENDON: I wasn't, no. Not really. And it's funny -- like, people just wouldn't ask, not flat-out.

JOURNALIST: They -- some did, right? Back when you first were touring, with the whole circus thing --

BRENDON: Yeah, but back then it wasn't -- I was 19, you know? I didn't, like, know anything really. And we never said no, we just -- I guess it was kind of a joke to us all.

JOURNALIST: Except it wasn't a joke.

BRENDON: No, I guess not, not in the end.

JOURNALIST: You were -- I remember seeing you out around town a couple times with the same guy, a while back, and people said it was a serious thing, that you guys were together for a long time.

BRENDON: [ _Pause_.] Yeah.

JOURNALIST: He's, he's a director, I think? Is that right?

BRENDON: Yeah, he -- look, I'm, I'm honestly not trying to dodge the question. But he and I haven't talked about talking about it, you know? I mean, we talk, we're totally still friends, but he -- he's got his own life, he's got a wife and a kid, and I don't want -- it's not really my place to --

JOURNALIST: Yeah, no, that's cool, I just meant --

BRENDON: We were together a long time, that's true. Like, five years maybe?

JOURNALIST: Can I ask what happened, why it ended?

BRENDON: It wasn't one awful thing or anything like that. He was -- he's older than I am. Not like, you know, not way older or anything, just a few years. But it's different, I guess. I was pretty young when we first got together, and we were -- it was serious, but it was also a lot of fun. We went out and partied a lot, and we were both doing our thing, you know, with our careers and all, but it wasn't -- we both were on the road a lot, sometimes together but sometimes not. And then I think he realized he wanted something more settled down, and maybe a family, and I was -- I was still, like, 25, and that didn't fit so much with where I was.

JOURNALIST: You grew up Mormon, right?

BRENDON: Yeah, though I'm not -- I haven't been active since I was in high school. It's just not my thing.

JOURNALIST: What do you think your family will have to say?

BRENDON: About...

JOURNALIST: About this album. This interview.

BRENDON: Well it's not -- I mean, they know already. It's not like this is going to be a surprise. That'd be a pretty shitty way for them to find out. We -- I have four siblings and we've all made different decisions about our lives, and I think we all try to respect each other's choices even if it's not what we'd want for ourselves. Our parents, too. I think that's probably true in any big family, right? You're not all going to be doing the same exact thing. And they, my last relationship, they really -- they were very welcoming to him, to us as a couple. Plus they've known Spencer since we were like, 16, so even though -- I think it wasn't what they were expecting, maybe, but they seem pretty happy about it.

JOURNALIST: Do you think they'll be happy you're talking to a reporter about it?

BRENDON: [ _Pause_.] I think they'll be happy I'm happy enough to want to.

JOURNALIST: [ _Pause_.] Okay. I think -- I think we can leave off on that, unless there's something more you want to add.

BRENDON: [ _Laughs_.] I think I've probably said enough. I'm -- I'm actually pretty proud of this album myself. I hope it stands on its own, like, separate from whatever people think about me.

JOURNALIST: I think it will. And, uh, the photo shoot is tomorrow, right, so someone will be --

 

END OF TAPE.


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